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World Baseball Classic: Do You Care?

Well in Arizona today, the USA came from behind to beat Canada to advance to the next round of the World Baseball Classic. It was a pretty good game, especially considering the fact it’s still early March. It had a decent pitching match-up between the USA’s Derek Holland and Canada’s Jameson Taillon, one of the top pitching prospects in the minors. For M’s fans, Michael Saunders continued his hot streak with a two run homer off the lefty Holland. For others, there’s Joey Votto vs. Ryan Braun. Joe Mauer vs. Justin Morneau. Still, quite a few die-hard baseball fans ignored it, and a few more disparaged it. I get it. The WBC’s got several problems, the biggest of which may be timing. Teams are loathe to allow their top players to go play ‘real’ baseball in March, so to get buy-in from teams, there are all manner of pitch count restrictions. The resulting parade of relievers looks a bit like spring training, it’s true. Then there’s the format – you can’t have seven game series the whole w

WBC brawl: Canadians and Mexico Deadly fight

The peaceful World Baseball Classic turned nasty Saturday when a full-scale brawl broke out, with seven players ejected and fans throwing at least two bottles from the stands at the games. "You can't hurt us Canadians,'' said Team Canada manager Ernie Whitt, after the first brawl in WBC history. The game, won 10-3 by Canada, sets up a showdown Sunday against Team USA with the right to advance to the second round along with Team Italy. Yet the game will be remembered for the ninth-inning brawl that had both managers urging WBC officials to change the tiebreaking format to eliminate run differential, encouraging teams to score as many runs as possible, despite the situation. via @metskevin11 "There's got to be another method other than running up the score on the opposing team,'' Whitt said. "No one likes that. That's not the way baseball's supposed to be played.'' Mexico, already frustrated with a 9-3 deficit in the ninth inning,